jueves, 26 de julio de 2012

Writing tips

How to improve
writing

1.
Use fewer nouns and more verbs

Operation Philadelphia
can only be a success through operational staff involvement such as increased
vigilance, reporting and visibility.

Operation Philadelphia
will succeed only if operational staff patrol public areas, keep their eyes
open and report anything unusual.

Abstract nouns
such as 'involvement', 'reporting' and 'visibility' don't describe specific
things, so they leave the reader with only a vague idea as to the meaning of
the sentence. Replacing abstract nouns with verbs means readers, i.e. the
staff, have a clearer idea what they should do.

2. Remove jargon

Before

After

Understanding how to develop strategic innovation competence is a
critical success factor for companies.

Companies need to know how to innovate in order to succeed.

There's not
enough difference between 'develop strategic innovation competence' and
'innovate' to justify using four words rather than one. We turned the sentence
round, replacing the jargony phrases with simple verbs.

3. Be active not passive

Before

After

A mistake was made in calculating your bill.

We made a mistake in calculating your bill.

The passive
voice is typically used by writers to avoid responsibility or blame. Whether used
deliberately or not, it tends to be less informative than the active voice
because it allows the writer to leave out a vital bit of information: who or
what did it

4. Punctuate properly

Before

After

I am sorry for the poor response you received when you first
complained, please be assured your concerns have been logged.

I am sorry for the poor response you received when you first
complained. Please be assured your concerns have been logged.

The comma is too
weak a punctuation mark in this case. The first statement makes sense on its
own, in other words it is a sentence. So using a full stop, to produce two
sentences rather than one, makes the ideas easier for the reader to take in.

5. Avoid dangling modifiers

Before

After

Walking along the cliffs, the waves were crashing against the rocks.

Walking along the cliffs, I saw the waves crashing against the rocks.

The modifier,
the phrase before the comma, leads the reader to expect the subject of the
sentence to follow, but it wasn't the waves who were walking; it was the
writer. It's fairly obvious what the original means, but the reader shouldn't
have to work to figure it out.

6. Build a clean sentence

Before

After

Lucozade had a spontaneous, strong and clear image, the brand however
was increasingly seen as being for sickness only, for children only, for
occasional use.

Although Lucozade had a strong image, it was seen primarily as a tonic
for treating sick children.

When writers try
to squeeze too many ideas into a sentence - without thinking them through - the
construction goes awry and the point is obscured. We encourage people to plan
their writing and construct sentences that get their message across clearly.

7. Read it through

Before

After

In 1851, almost one-tenth of the population lived in Paris and its suburbs. By 1911, the rest of
the country was occupied by only four-fifths of the population.

Between 1851 and 1911 the proportion of the French population living
in Paris and
its suburbs doubled from 10% to 20%.

The original is
hard enough to understand because the focus, that is the subject of the
sentence, changes from 'Paris'
in the first sentence to 'the rest of the country' in the second. It is even
harder because it uses different fractions that require effort to compare. We
used percentages instead, to make the point more clearly.